Happy Sunday. President Obama lands this morning, Eastern time, at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, for a refueling stop after a six-hour flight from Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Then the president has a six-hour flight to Joint Base Andrews, where he’s scheduled for a mid-afternoon arrival after nine days in Asia. The press charter refuels in Minneapolis and gets to Andrews at dinnertime.

--Three traveling staffers will celebrate birthdays on the flight home: Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, NSC Director of Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes and Research Director Liz Jarvis-Shean. Fair to say there is a lot of time for a cake during the 16-hour flight back. Ben celebrated early at a local Yokohama karaoke bar, where he serenaded colleagues with everything from Bruce Springsteen to Whitney Houston.

--SPOTTED, watching the Auburn-Georgia game on a laptop in Japan: Robert Gibbs. Auburn QB Cam Newton shook off controversy and led Auburn past Georgia, 49-31. Gibbs: “No one better in college football, period.”

DRIVING THE DAY: Most newly-elected House members today arrive for freshman orientation week. Members-elect will check into a downtown hotel, then attend a reception where they are welcomed to D.C. by Speaker Pelosi. Members-elect then attend partisan dinners with Leader Boehner and Leader Hoyer. Monday is a full day of training run by the House Administration Committee, with an “Open House” in the Speaker's office for new Members, hosted by Pelosi. Schedule highlights for “112th Congress – New Member Orientation”:

BOEHNER’S WELCOME LETTER TO FRESHMEN – Jake “Fast Break” Sherman scores a copy: “Dear Friend, As you prepare to travel to Washington this weekend for the first time as a member of our House Republican team, I … commend the initiative you and your classmates have demonstrated by organizing Sunday’s class meeting. Your class colleagues will be a great source of support, inspiration and friendship in the months ahead as the new majority gets to work on the priorities of the American people. … It all begins next week. I look forward to the honor of serving with you in the 112th Congress as we begin a new drive for smaller, less costly, more accountable government in Washington. See you Sunday night. Sincerely, John Boehner P.S. If you haven’t seen it, Peggy Noonan had an excellent column in the Wall Street Journal this morning, which I’ve attached to this email. If you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to read it as you travel to Washington this weekend.” Full text http://politi.co/bAsmmn

--Peggy Noonan’s “Declarations” column, “Obama's Gifts to the GOP: Republicans own the political center for now. Not because they deserve it”: “Right now the center is with the Republicans. They voted like Democrats in 2008 and like Republicans in 2010. But there's going to be lots of drama in Washington the next few months, and things could turn on a dime. … The mainstream media already has a story line in its head, and it is that a lot of these new Congress critters are a little radical, a little nutty. … The mainstream media this January will be looking for the nuts. … [W]hen they want to paint you as nuts and yahoos, don't help them paint you as nuts and yahoos. It's good to keep in mind the advice of the 19th century actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who once said, speaking in a different context, that she didn't really care what people did as long as they didn't do it in the street and frighten the horses. That would be the advice for incoming Republicans: Stand tall, speak clear, and don't frighten the horses.”

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FIRST LOOK – Richard Wolffe’s “Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House” – out Tuesday -- $17.16 on Amazon http://amzn.to/cDkbGR -- Among the juicy bits from Richard’s all-access semester in the West Wing (“based on my contemporaneous notes of White House events from January to March 2010”):

--“How and why Obama grew detached from Change – even as he was enacting big changes – is one of the stories at the heart of this White House.” (p. 7)

--“[O]ther senior staffers believed that [former Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel’s excess energy was a major part of the problem … In place of the rigid discipline of the presidential campaign, instead of their no-drama style and the strategic focus, ideas ricocheted around the West Wing with each firing of Emanuel’s synapses. ‘It’s all tactics and no strategy,’ said one of Emanuel’s close colleagues. ‘That’s something the president feels very strongly he’s missing. How do I get from here to where I want to go? It’s all tactical and it’s all Rahm. He has no follow-through and no management. Nobody is there to check that what was decided in the seven-thirty meeting actually happens. The problem with Rahm is that, yes, he’s brilliant. But he is purely tactical, and he changes his mind based on a conversation he just had with Paul Begala. There are many times when Axe has to shout him down to drop an idea or a tactic. And his style is unbelievably bad. It’s just too abusive.” (p. 55-6)

--“The Revivalists were campaign loyalists who believed in the transformational spirit of Change. They nurtured a sense of mission … The Survivalists were political insiders who measured Change in the smaller increments of the here and now. They saw themselves as scrappy realists … Obama himself straddled both groups, leaving the questions about his character and purpose unresolved.” (p. 94-5)

--Larry “Summers was a Survivalist, and his opposition often lay among the Revivalists at the Council of Economic Advisers: [Christina] Romer, as well as Obama’s campaign economist Austan Goolsbee, a young University of Chicago economics professor.” (p. 176)

--“Emanuel was the master of the system, not the man to change it.” (p. 99)

--“Everyone knew the communications effort was struggling, including Dunn and her successor, Dan Pfeiffer, who had spent several weeks reviewing their operations. He wrote his critique in a seven-page memo and delivered a forty-five minute version of his conclusions to the team in the Roosevelt Room. Pfeiffer believed the Cabinet was underused in 2009. They had failed to coordinate their message with Democrats in Congress and Democratic pundits on cable and in print. Rapid response and planning were both in trouble. Above all, they needed to be more strategic in using the president’s time. They relied too much on him to deliver the message.

“Obama agreed. He was out there all by himself. There were a few cabinet officials out there, but most were hardly seen or heard. The other side was running a campaign against them, but they weren’t running a campaign back. It was all defense and no offense. And they needed to accomplish what he had always set out to do as a community organizer, as a writer, and as a presidential candidate: to tell a story. ‘We did a lot of good things last year, but we could be a lot tighter in how we operate,” said Obama. To the campaign veterans, the flashbacks to Ohio and Texas were vivid: They were repeating many of the same mistakes they had made as they tried to close out the primaries early in March 2008. They had grown conventional in their politics and message, forgetting their identity as outsiders in their desperation to win.” (p. 109)

--“Source Notes”: “This volume draws heavily on exclusive interviews with several dozen White House officials, congressional staffers, administration officials, and Obama advisers and friends, using a variety of ground rules: on the record, on background, and off the record. … Exclusive comments from President Obama include several drawn from interviews during the presidential election, as well as two Oval Office sessions, one of which was dedicated to the subject of this book, on April 22, 2010. My interview with Vice President Biden was held in his West Wing office on July 21, 2010.” (p. 295)

TOP TALKER – “Nicer Emanuel woos Chicago voters,” by Meredith Shiner, in Chicago: “Rahm Emanuel … officially announced his bid for mayor in a packed elementary school gym on Chicago's north side, showing his softer, emotional side in an event that sought to downsize one of Washington's biggest personalities for a local audience. Emanuel, flanked by his wife and children on a small stage at John C. Cooley Elementary, choked up when discussing his childhood in nearby Albany Park -- and his father Benjamin M. Emanuel, a Jerusalem-born pediatrician, known around Chicago as ‘Doc’ Emanuel. … ‘My Uncle Les worked out of the 17th Police District in Albany Park, and retired as a sergeant after 25 years on the force. And for six years, I had the privilege to represent Albany Park in Congress’ …

--“Emanuel is the front-runner [and] aims to raise $6 million to $8 million before the Feb. 22 election. … ‘We don't have a singular base. We're working to build a coalition, and today's event reflected that,’ Emanuel campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said … Emanuel's likely opponents such as Rep. Danny Davis, who was named the ‘consensus’ candidate by a coalition of members of Chicago's black community last week, or Gery Chico, a former Daley chief of staff and head of public schools, who has strong support in the Latino community, would appear to have more natural bases. … [T]wo other serious African- American candidates, Rev. James Meeks and former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, are expected to toss their hats in the ring, splitting a key bloc. … [T]he more candidates in the race, the more likely it is Emanuel can win.” http://bit.ly/dqfSve

--From an Emanuel e-mail to supporters: “Some of you know me from my days as a Congressman representing Chicago's 5th District. Some from my work in the Clinton administration -- or as President Obama's Chief of Staff. And to some of you from Albany Park, I'm simply Doctor Emanuel's kid. Others are just getting to know me as I've traveled the city the past month on my ‘Tell It Like It Is’ Tour, visiting ‘L’ stops and grocery stores.” YouTube of announcement speechhttp://bit.ly/b5u2Xo

TOP STORY – WashPost, 2-col. lead, “Karzai calls on U.S. to lighten troop presence – AT ODDS WITH PETRAEUS,” by Joshua Partlow, in Kabul: “President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that the United States must reduce the visibility and intensity of its military operations in Afghanistan and end the increased U.S. Special Operations forces night raids that aggravate Afghans and could exacerbate the Taliban insurgency. In an interview with The Washington Post, Karzai said that he wanted American troops off the roads and out of Afghan homes … His comments placed him at odds with U.S. commander Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has made capture-and-kill missions a central component of his counterinsurgency strategy … ‘The time has come to reduce military operations,’ Karzai said. ‘The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan . . . to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life.’ … In an hour-long interview with Post reporters and editors in his office in Kabul, Karzai said he was speaking out not to criticize the United States but in the belief that candor could improve what he called a ‘grudging’ relationship between the countries.” http://wapo.st/aXVSpY

FINAL STOP – Carol E. Lee’s last trip dispatch – from Yokohama, Japan: “President Obama reacquainted himself with a piece of his childhood on Sunday before heading back to Washington, visiting the Great Buddha in Japan's small coastal city of Kamakura. He had stood in front of the imposing bronze statue as a six-year-old boy. His mother had brought him there and then taken him for green tea ice cream. ‘It is wonderful to return to this great treasure of Japanese culture,’ Obama wrote in a guest book at the temple. ‘Its beauty has stayed with me for many years.’ From India to Indonesia to Japan, the president folded in stops that went beyond the state visits and global economic summits that brought him. … While he didn't stop at any of his childhood haunts in Jakarta, where he lived for four years, Obama said he found it ‘a little disorienting’ to return to a modernized city he remembered for streets crowded with becaks and bemos when he moved there with his mother in 1967. At the Great Buddha, Obama told his guides how he visited the statue with his mother when he was six. ‘I was this big,’ he said, holding his left hand at his waist … He sampled a green tea ice cream bar, like he had 43 years ago, and bought a pair of bracelets for his daughters at the gift shop.”

--Donilon: “[T]hank you all for the time, attention, energy, resources that you and your organizations have put into covering this trip. It’s very much appreciated. I know you all have really been working 24 hours a day and, again, much appreciated. … When we came into office, we had the opportunity … to survey the world and to ask ourselves where the United States should apply its resources, time and attention, and where, as we came in, we might be not applying enough time, resources and attention. And Asia stood out as the region of the world that we thought most in need of additional time, attention and resources. And we raised it up as a strategic priority for this administration. That manifested itself in a number of ways -- direct engagement with leaders and the peoples of Asia … This trip is kind of the next stage of that and obviously, a very important stage of that. … Hillary Clinton’s first trip as Secretary of State was to Asia. That's the first time a Secretary of State has taken his or her first trip to Asia since Dean Rusk in 1961. And we’ve carried this on in terms of engagement. … The President yesterday had his seventh face-to-face meeting with President Hu Jintao of China. …

--More Donilon: “[E]very nation on the trip and at the various conferences that you attended with us has made very clear [that] they’re counting on a strong United States and a strong United States economy. Robust economic growth -- absolutely critical to these nations … [T]he region and the nations of this region are looking quite directly to the United States for leadership -- … leadership in setting the agenda, leadership in terms of providing, … reassurance and balance in the region. … We strengthened our economic ties with India, announcing transactions across a range of sectors, totaling nearly $10 billion and resulting in an estimated 54,000 U.S. jobs. … I think the extraordinary thing is the degree of consensus that has been established and was on display in Seoul [at the Group of 20 summit]. … So rather than being an example … of a place where you had any sort of unnecessary disagreements, I think the real story there is U.S. leadership, a U.S. agenda, and actual achievement and progress in putting in place, by the way, those mechanisms … to prevent the next crisis.”

--Birthday Boy Rhodes, on the First Lady’s role: “[H]er ability on the world stage … was an enormous takeaway for us. I think in India, the events that she did, in many instances, were among the most successful events of this trip. She clearly reached the Indian people through her direct interactions with young Indians. … [J]ust from a public diplomacy standpoint, those events of her interacting with people from various backgrounds, and literally directly engaging young people, hearing from them about their concerns, it sends a very powerful message that we’re not just speaking to the Indian elite; we’re speaking to the broad Indian populace … If you look at the comments that they made coming out of some of those interactions, they were taken aback by the opportunity they had to have that kind of face-to-face and very personal interaction with her. So I think her star power and her ability to send a positive message about America to the world was a real key takeaway of the Indian trip.”

2012 – Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty op-ed in The (Manchester, N.H.) Union Leader, “Time to close the open bar in Washington”: “One of the key lessons from this year's historic elections is that Americans understand that nothing is truly free. … [M]ost of us have attended weddings, some with open bars, and some with cash bars. … Guests presented with options at a cash bar typically will pause and think about what they would like to consume, how much they would like to consume, and how much it will cost. … Now consider an open bar. Guests tend to consume almost endlessly (we've all seen it), with no regard for cost, much less the volume of consumption. People at an open bar are more likely to embarrass themselves, not to mention bankrupt the father of the bride. … The open-bar mentality in Washington D.C. needs to stop, immediately. On Election Day, Americans said they want a return to common sense. They want reduced, redesigned and responsible government. It's well past closing time, and the federal government needs to sober up.” http://bit.ly/9hCu7n

SPORTS BLINK – COLLEGE FOOTBALL – AP “Top 25 Rdp: Auburn, TCU rally to stay unbeaten”: “Cam Newton and No. 1 Auburn rolled past Georgia 49-31 after being down 21-7 in the first half, while No. 3 TCU spotted San Diego State the first 14 points before going on to win 40-35. No. 1 Oregon got the biggest scare, needing a big defensive effort and the help of a missed field goal to beat California 15-13. No. 4 Boise State got to sit back and watch the other national championship contender after staying perfect with a 52-14 victory at Idaho on Friday night. Newton seemed unaffected by a tumultuous week in which it was reported that his father asked Mississippi State for money for his son to play for the Bulldogs. There was some uncertainty about whether Newton would play, but he started and Georgia was unable to stop him. TCU erased its early deficit, then allowed San Diego State to score three late touchdowns before holding on.”

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Richard Wolffe is a card carrying Obama groupie, willing and anxious to do WHATEVER is asked to satisfy the object of his affection. No doubt he has an official Obama Fan Club "Obama as Messiah" poster on his bedroom wall. How he can hold himself out with a straight face as an objective journalist is beyond the realm of earthly reason.